Bantam Classics, $6.95, ISBN 0-553-21311-3
Historical Fiction, 1981 (Reissue)
Ah, Moby-Dick. That literary leviathan. That white whale of a novel that lurks in the depths of required reading lists, striking terror into the hearts of students and casual readers alike. This is the book for which the term TL; DR was practically invented. It is massive, sprawling, and much like its titular cetacean, an absolute unit.
Penned by Herman Melville—one of those well-traveled, swashbuckling 19th-century authors who actually lived life before writing about it (a rarity today, since modern authors are too busy tweeting and paying rent)—this novel is hailed by intellectuals with far too much free time as one of the greatest works of literature ever produced. Which is fair, if one’s definition of “great” includes long, meandering tangents about whaling techniques and cetology that will make you question every life choice that led you to reading this book.
The plot, when distilled from the ocean of digressions, is relatively simple: Ishmael, a broody wanderer who decides that a bit of light whaling would be a good way to clear his head, joins the crew of the Pequod, helmed by Captain Ahab, a man so obsessed with revenge that even Batman would tell him to chill.
Ahab, you see, once had an unfortunate encounter with a very large whale named Moby-Dick, who rudely relieved him of one leg. Rather than taking the reasonable route of getting a decent prosthetic and moving on with his life, Ahab decides to dedicate his remaining days to hunting this whale down, because that is the normal and well-adjusted response to being inconvenienced by nature.
To its credit, the novel does have some truly great elements. Ahab’s obsession is so vividly drawn that you can practically feel his madness seeping from the pages. He is one of literature’s most memorable anti-heroes—compelling, terrifying, and actually possessing real depth behind his bluster.
If you have the maturity of a 12-year-old (or just a healthy sense of humor), you’ll find much enjoyment in Mr Melville’s 19th-century diction, as the book is rife with amusingly outdated uses of words like “gay” and “erection”, leading to sentences that sound unintentionally pornographic by modern standards.
The novel also has a surprisingly progressive friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg, the so-called “cannibal” harpooner, whose bond manages to be one of the few things in the book that doesn’t feel like Mr Melville delivering a never-ending maritime TED Talk.
But for every moment of genuine brilliance, there are pages—pages—of information on the intricate art of rendering whale oil, the different species of whales (because Mr Melville thought you should be an expert in marine biology), and general day-to-day tedium on a whaling ship. Jules Verne at least made oceanic adventures feel like a whimsical journey into the unknown; Herman Melville just reminds you that life at sea is mostly about waiting around for something vaguely interesting to happen.
Then there’s the shocking realization that, despite this book feeling as long as the actual voyage of the Pequod, the events technically take place over just a few days. This is an astonishing feat, truly—Mr Melville has somehow managed to slow time itself within the pages, stretching out what should be a thrilling high-seas adventure into a 600-plus page odyssey of whaling minutiae. By the time the white whale finally makes an appearance, the reader is less excited and more relieved, hoping Moby-Dick will just get on with it and sink the ship already.
Ultimately, Moby-Dick is one of those books that academics and literary critics will passionately defend, while the average reader quietly wonders if they should just watch the live action adaptation instead. Unless you have an insatiable passion for 19th-century whaling procedures, you may find yourself hoping for the sweet release of the final chapter long before Ahab meets his dramatic, watery end. Hey, at least you’ll walk away with an impressive amount of knowledge about blubber extraction so there’s that.
